Sonya Rapoport’s Artblog, 2008 – 2012

Between 2008 and 2012, Rapoport created a series of extensively researched and visually rich blog posts at Sonya Rapoport’s Artblog. She stated that the purpose of the blog was “to re-appropriate my former work and to re-contextualize it into current events, topically, politically, and/or conceptually.”

Collaging together photographer Imogen Cunningham’s Nude and Tuberose series, Rapoport offers this re-approach to her project Goethe’s Urpflanze (1979), which made use of computer printouts of scientific data recording the effects of pollution on bean plants in the context of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s alchemical theory of the primal plant.

Intrigued by the discovery that bagels were part of the ancient Egyptians diet, Rapoport updated her extensive project The Transgenic Bagel (1993 – 1996) to reflect recent developments in genetics that show that one gene can code for several different traits.

Inspired by puppeteer Vit Horejs’ The Very Sad Story of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Rapoport recontextualizes the accused spies’ story via her computer-assisted interactive installation Sexual Jealousy: The Shadow of Love (1993).

An ancient Egyptian mythological approach to understanding the Madoff Investment Scandal. Rapoport speculates which choices Madoff would have made if he had participated in her interactive installation The Animated Soul: Gateway to your Ka (1991).

A reflection on the difference between American and Iraqi cultural attitudes about shoes, with images related to Muntadhar al-Zeidi’s shoe-throwing attack on U.S. President George W. Bush. An update of Rapoport’s interactive installation Shoe-Field (1982 – 1989).

Focusing on the upbringing and family life of U.S. President Barack Obama, Make Me A Superman updates the 1997 Web Art project Make Me A Man which explores gender and masculine initiation ceremonies in traditional New Guinean culture and the West.

The original Digital Mudra (1987) compared photos clipped from the newspaper with traditional Indian Kathakali gestures. 23 years later, Rapoport takes a look at contemporary society through the same lens.

This blog post is closely associated with the performance The Nuclear Family in the Atomic Age, itself an extension of the 1997 Computer Printout Drawing Horizontal Cobalt. Uses images of the work of American Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein (1993 – 1997), Rapoport’s family photos, Russian translations of terms associated with nuclear proliferation, and the figure of the Golem.